


De Oppresso Liber

by sardonicynic



Category: 24
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-24
Updated: 2011-12-24
Packaged: 2017-10-28 01:35:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 708
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/302277
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sardonicynic/pseuds/sardonicynic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The following takes place during Jack's Delta days.</p>
            </blockquote>





	De Oppresso Liber

**Author's Note:**

  * For [pwrofbauer](https://archiveofourown.org/users/pwrofbauer/gifts).



> Title borrowed from the U.S. Special Forces motto, which is "to liberate the oppressed" in Latin. Warnings for violence and mentions of torture. Love and props to [leigh57](http://archiveofourown.org/users/leigh57/profile) for her fantastic beta.

The South American intel is bad.

It's worse than bad, Jack thinks, ducking under a blown-out window to jam home another magazine. It's fucking terrible, because this is a pear-shaped nightmare.

He can see Davis across the room, bleeding freely from one shoulder. Guthrie stopped breathing three minutes ago. Yeltis hasn't said a word on the comm in more than ten, and who the hell knows what happened to Chang after that last round of mortar fire from the southeast.

Working on the assumption his team is down to two, Jack signals Davis. Davis nods, and pulls a grenade from his bloodied satchel.

Davis tosses it to Jack, but before Jack can yank the pin and hurl it through the broken glass above his head, a boom rattles his molars.

He opens his mouth to call out to Davis, but manages only half a syllable before the wall explodes, sending him sprawling on top of Guthrie's body.

 

 

\+ + + + + + +

 

 

He wakes to ice and fire.

He's wet and shivering, orange embers dancing before his unfocused eyes. Pins and needles prickle his tied hands and feet, and his tongue is thick in his parched mouth.

" _Hola_ , Captain Bauer."

Shit.

Jack doesn't say a word, training and contempt trumping fear.

 

 

\+ + + + + + +

 

 

He breathes through the worst of it.

But god _damn_ , everything they teach in Delta about pain thresholds and management is bullshit. Dissociating the mind from the body when the body is being sliced and gouged and burned isn't fucking possible; Jack aches in ways he's never imagined, even in the darkest recesses of his right brain.

When they come at him with something that makes Freddy Krueger's glove look like an oven mitt by comparison, he allows himself one short, coughing chuckle.

It's a fake-out, and he wants them to know _he_ knows, because the cattle prod is going to hurt a whole lot more.

 

 

\+ + + + + + +

 

 

Despite his best efforts to track the passing of time, it's useless when the lights are always on. He figures it's been a few days — a week, at most, but he can't be sure.

Davis probably didn't make it, but Jack doesn't allow himself a second to grieve. He can't afford to, when he's waiting for footsteps in the corridor at every moment.

He's careful not to bring Teri or Kim here. It's not fair to his wife or daughter, holding them in a place like this, filled with his piss and sweat and vomit and feces.

So he thinks of benign shit, like the shapes of clouds and the smell of fresh air, and passages of the Special Forces survival guide he's committed to memory.

 _You must be as objective as possible and weigh all the positive and negative aspects of the situation you are in._

A small part of him wonders if the Army is in on this unfunny joke, but when every hour in this eight-by-twelve box brings him closer to breaking, he can't splinter his focus with thoughts of a rescue that may never come.

 

 

\+ + + + + + +

 

 

The approaching footsteps are different, this time.

Louder.

And _more_ , somehow.

Jack hears sharp yells, rapid Spanish and Portuguese he doesn't entirely catch.

Muffled thuds, and two more voices, speaking in English.

He must be dreaming or dying, because when the cell door opens, he thinks he sees Benton.

"Bauer, let's move."

Benton's hand on his forearm is like a physical slap of freezing water. Jack's fuzzed state clears enough for him to stand.

"Move, go, _move_ ," Benton says, tethering Jack to the breakneck race up several flights of uneven stairs.

They clear the compound a few minutes later, all but throwing themselves into the waiting MH-6. Jack's empty stomach lurches, acid and bile twisting his intestines as the helicopter rises into the dark Argentine sky.

 

 

\+ + + + + + +

 

 

He thanks Benton later, after medical attention and between debriefs.

Benton shrugs, half-smiling.

"You'd do the same," he says. "But when you have to drag my ass out of a hellhole, I'll try my best to be _dressed_ and waiting."

Jack's broken ribs stifle his answering chuckle, but his bemusement's there, if dulled by painkillers and the walnut in his throat.

"Next time," he says, and shuffles into the next room to get yet another statement on record for the brass.


End file.
